Steam Box Prototype Hardware Specs Surface

Specifications for the upcoming Valve Steam box have hit the net, and even though it fills a wide range of performance levels, this thing is going to be powerful. The table below shows the prototype specifications, which could change before launch, but as you can see there are a wide range of Steam Boxes that range from an Intel i3 system with a Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 to a Core i7 with the (as of now) single fastest GPU graphics card on the market.

The prices of the Steam boxes also fill a wide range of budgets with the lost possibilty costing around the $500 mark ,while the highest end models could run as much as $2000. Valve is really covering a decent range of performance, and price points. Valve doesn’t specify the model of the Core i3 CPU, but assuming they’re using the same platform in all prototypes it stands to reason that it will be one of the i3 Haswell models listed in the table above. The only differences between the i3-4130 and i3-4340 are the clock speed (3.4 to 3.6GHz) and the iGPU (the 4310 has HD 4400 while the other two have HD 4600.

Another interesting aspect of the Steam box is that like a PC it is upgradable, so if you need more performance you can upgrade the hardware, or you can simply build it yourself. What else is a PC right now than a glorified Steam Box, right?

The below excerpt is from Valve;

“So for our own first prototype Steam Machine ( the one we’re shipping to 300 Steam users ), we’ve chosen to build something special. The prototype machine is a high-end, high-performance box, built out of off-the-shelf PC parts. It is also fully upgradable, allowing any user to swap out the GPU, hard drive, CPU, even the motherboard if you really want to. Apart from the custom enclosure, anyone can go and build exactly the same machine by shopping for components and assembling it themselves. And we expect that at least a few people will do just that. (We’ll also share the source CAD files for our enclosure, in case people want to replicate it as well.)”

With the Steam controller, specs and pricing coming out the puzzle of the Steam Box is getting clearer. Stay tuned for more updates!